Cooling & Applied Technology, Inc.

John Bean Technologies Corporation

Ace Incorporated

Jeremy B Estes

Andrew C Estes

Michael E Miller

J Barton Langley

Kurt R Danzy

Kyle A Stobaugh

Mark A Moody

Lucas M Miller

Ray W Balaster

A support for carrying a front-half of a chicken through a deboning process, including an upper portion, a lower portion, and a base for attaching to a conveyor belt. The upper portion includes a first shelf and a second shelf for resting under the shoulder knuckles of the front-half of the chicken and a protrusion positioned between the first shelf and the second shelf for spreading the shoulder knuckles. The lower portion of the support has two sections for resting under the breast meat of the front-half of the chicken. The first section of the lower portion of the support slopes downward and outward from the upper portion, while the second section of the lower portion slopes downward and inward from the first section.

Support for carrying a chicken through a deboning process

A rocker-type poultry chiller, including a tank for receiving poultry carcasses and holding chilled water, an axle mounted in the tank, a main paddle connected to the axle, and a side paddle connected to the axle. The oscillation of the main paddle and the side paddle urges the carcasses upwardly and laterally, which contributes to the cooling of the carcasses as a result of their thorough contact in the chilled water. The movement of the paddles also gently massages the carcasses by gently bumping them against the paddle blades and the wall of the tank. The repeated compression of the carcasses tends to tenderize the meat. The side paddles ensure more predictable and consistent contact between the paddles and all of the carcasses, which causes more agitation of the carcasses and more effective washing of the carcasses.

Three-paddle rocker chiller

An auto-cleaning marination filter for a poultry injector system including an outer housing having a liquid inlet and outlet, a screen that allows passage of liquids and impedes passage of solid particles, and a wiper surrounded by said screen for removing solid particles attached to the screen by reverse flow of the liquid through a gap in the wiper.

Auto-cleaning marination filter for poultry injector system

An auger-type poultry chiller having an auger with multiple long-pitch auger blades. The blades of the auger create pockets that spiral around the auger shaft and extend the length of the auger. While the product in the chiller is locked into a certain pocket, it is not locked into a certain spot lengthwise in the chiller. The product, therefore, is able to distribute evenly along the length of the chiller within its pocket even if there are gaps in loading time or if unloading stops momentarily.

Poultry chiller with multi-blade long-pitch auger

A vacuum transfer system having a weighing hopper mounted via at least one load cell to a frame. The weighing hopper is provided with an inlet connected via a product line to a product inlet hopper and a sliding outlet gate. An actuator valve is operatively connected to the weighing hopper and to a vacuum source. A controller is operatively connected to the actuator valve and also controls the opening and closing of the sliding gate. The product line comprises a flexible pipe section and a rigid pipe section pivotally mounted to the frame at a pivot disposed substantially vertically below the center of the flexible pipe section. In operation, the operator keys into the controller a target rate of product transfer and a target weight of product in the weighing hopper. The actuator valve applies vacuum to the weighing hopper in order to transfer the product from the inlet hopper to the weighing hopper. When the preset target weight of product in the weighing hopper is reached, the actuator valve bleeds off the vacuum in the weighing hopper before the load cells weigh the product contained in the weighing hopper. Release of the product is delayed until the release of the product results in an actual rate of product transfer equal to the target rate of product transfer. The product is released by opening the sliding gate. The load cells are zeroed after each cycle in order to minimize any drift in the weight measurements.

Growing community of inventors

London, AR, United States of America

Jeremy B Estes